Fractional CFO
A CFO’s judgment, without a full-time CFO’s salary.
There is a stage where a business has outgrown basic bookkeeping but is not ready to hire a full-time finance chief. That is where a fractional CFO earns their keep. We step in as the financial brain of your business: building forecasts and budgets, watching cash flow before it becomes a problem, analyzing pricing and margins, and helping you make the big calls about hiring, financing, and growth with real numbers behind them. And because we are also your CPA and, if you want, your investment advisor, the strategy we build for the business connects directly to your personal taxes and wealth. Fee-only and flat-fee, scaled to what your business actually needs.
What a fractional CFO actually does
Cash flow forecasting. A rolling forward view of what is coming in and going out, far enough ahead that a tight month is something you plan for rather than discover. This is the single most useful thing most growing businesses are missing.
Pricing and margin. Which jobs, products or clients actually make money once you load them properly. The answer is regularly not the one the owner expects, and it changes what you sell.
Hiring decisions. What a role costs fully loaded, what it has to produce to pay for itself, and whether the cash flow supports it before the revenue arrives.
Budget against actual. A plan for the year and a monthly check on where reality diverged, so course corrections happen in month three rather than month eleven.
Lender and investor conversations. Banks ask for projections and they ask specific questions about them. We prepare the numbers and, when it helps, sit in the meeting.
The stage this fits
Usually somewhere past the point where the owner can hold the whole business in their head, and well before a full-time finance hire makes sense. The signals are familiar: revenue is growing but cash feels tighter than it should, you are making six-figure decisions on instinct, or you have started saying you need to get a handle on the numbers.
What you get
Forecasting, budgeting, and cash-flow planning. You see problems and opportunities coming instead of reacting after the fact.
Pricing, margin, and growth decisions backed by data. The big calls get made with real numbers, not gut feel.
Business strategy connected to your personal tax and wealth. What is best for the company and what is best for you stay in sync.
What it is not
This is not bookkeeping with a better title. The books have to be clean first, which is a separate and cheaper problem, and we will tell you if that is what you actually need. It is also not a permanent arrangement for most clients. Plenty of engagements are a defined project: build the forecast, fix the pricing model, get through the lending round.
Who this is for
Owner-operated businesses in the Lehigh Valley and Upper Bucks in a growth or transition stage. Practices and firms where the owner is also the finance department. Businesses preparing for a loan, a large capital purchase, a buy-in or a sale.
Because we also handle the tax side, the company decision and the owner’s personal tax position get weighed together rather than separately.